Information retrieval systems, or search engines, such Google and Yahoo, maintain databases comprising information about web pages and are arranged to provide lists of results, ranked in order of assumed relevance, in response to queries raised by users of the systems. To this end, the systems employ automated software programs to investigate any links they encounter. The contents of each page are then analyzed, indexed accordingly and stored in an index database for retrieval in response to related queries.
In general, the content of the pages is analysed by extracting words from titles, headings, or special fields such as meta-tags, and classified accordingly. However, for resources comprising image or video based data, information retrieval systems typically rely on context in which the resource is used in order to classify the resource and store it accordingly.
It is appreciated that if images could be labelled according to their content as an alternative or in addition to their context, the retrieval of images by search engines or other such applications could be made much more effective. The problem however is how to improve the rate and quality of labelling provided by authors or users.
In order to improve the classification of resources comprising image and/or video data, Google developed Google Image Labeler. Google Image Labeler was a feature of Google Image Search that allows a user to label images to thereby help improve the quality of Google's image search results. By availing of human labelling of images, the images are associated with the meaning or content of the image, as opposed to being indexed solely on the context in which they arose, thereby enabling Google to provide a more accurate and detailed database of resources.
US 2002/0161747 discloses a media content search engine for extracting and associated text content with media content, however, the engine is limited to enabling a user to define whether or not a given piece of content is relevant or not to any given query.
The object of the present invention is to provide an improved method and component for classifying resources of a database.